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You are saying the same thing they said -- it doesn't scale. It's not how you build a large factory. They acknowledge this and pretty quickly move on to say th

You are saying the same thing they said -- it doesn't scale. It's not how you build a large factory. They acknowledge this and pretty quickly move on to say that they are aiming for smaller and sustainable. They even specifically call out why they chose not to use a conveyor based oven in the video. Basically they believe they can be price reasonable at small scales, small batches. Build process knowledge and expertise over time, and then incrementally scale up after assessing bottlenecks. I think the route of local sustainable, grow as needed or collaborate to expand capacity is pretty reasonable.

Animats 9mo ago
It's not possible to make a competitively priced product that way. What are you going to do, sell artisanal circuit boards on Etsy? Here's a small US-based PCB board and assembly facility in the US, in Hesperia, California.[1] Looks like it might have 20 to 30 employees from the building picture. This is probably about as small as a viable business of this type gets. It doesn't have to be done in a huge plant like JLCPCB in Shenzhen. Here's a company in India, Invariance, which makes low-cost semi-automatic machines to do exactly the same operations 39c3 is doing.[2] They have three machines - a solder paste spreader, a pick and place machine, and a mini tunnel reflow oven. They make all three machines. These machines intended for small companies who want to assemble their own boards in house. The solder paste spreader is just automated enough to do a consistent job, with pressure and timing controlled. The pick and place machine uses their own feeder design which runs off strips of component tape. The tunnel oven is small, only about a meter long. That's close to a viable minimum production solution. [1] https://mermarinc.com/ https://mermarinc.com/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_VCJyeqa-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_VCJyeqa-A
- crote 9mo ago
  That depends on your definition of "competitive", doesn't it? Being 3x as expensive as China but 0.1x as expensive as current small-scale EU manufacturing can be extremely competitive. Plenty of people looking for <1000 unit runs would be willing to pay extra for a "made in EU" label.
  - Joel_Mckay 9mo ago
    If the only service a CM brings to the table is cost reduction, than its a doomed business model. Rule #23: Don't compete to be at the bottom, as you just might actually win. Have a great day =3
    - nebula8804 9mo ago
      Technically the differentiation isn't cost reduction its in shored manufacturer. That can become an important requirement as firms become more wary of IP theft and other issues. Besides other than that what can you really differentiate in this field that isn't cost? Its a service that is standardized regardless of country. Maybe you can provide different "styles" of boards (ie. different specs) or improve the entire submit to production pipeline but thats about it.
      - crote 9mo ago
        The pipeline is a massive one - especially for PCBA. Being able to get an instant quote and order in 5 minutes is worth a lot. Nobody wants a 2-week-long back-and-forth with sales and engineering for a basic prototype run.
        nebula8804 9mo ago
        I don't know how much real innovation can happen there that the Chinese haven't done. In fact the Chinese haven't really innovated, that have optimized existing processes. Think about it: If you break it down: a "2-week-long back-and-forth with sales and engineering for a basic prototype run" is the same stuff happening in the background as the "get an instant quote and order in 5 minutes"...just much faster. Thats not the innovation I was talking about: Let me give an example. When the Xbox was being developed, there was a push within Microsoft to create a standard CD‑based game console that was a more refined version of the existing competitors. The Xbox team pushed back and said: No, you don't enter a market and just copy the incumbents. You need to do something different and differentiated. So they innovated by adding a hard drive and standard networking to every console. The addition of these components as standard in each console opened up a new paradigm of gaming with Xbox Live and was a different vision compared to what the others were offering at the time. They eventually ended up moving the market in a fundamental way. Now, going back to manufacturing, how do we translate that to PCB manufacturing? Again, I don’t know how you could possibly truly innovate the pipeline process more than it has already been done. Even just adding an AI‑handled pipeline process, it's just further optimizing what has already been done. There may or may not be an opportunity to truly move the market but if there is, then thats something the West can do to really compete.
- snovv_crash 9mo ago
  39c3 is the conference it is being presented at, not the presenter. 39th Chaos Communication Congress, the annual conference of the Chaos Computer Club. This is a hacker messing around who is presenting to inspire others and get feedback. Many things presented at Xc3 are wildly impractical, potentially illegal, or not even technical at all and more on the side of activism and policy. Most are interesting and fun, which is the main goal.
- abielefeld 9mo ago
  Hey, I'm one of the two speakers :) The commenter above you phrased it well: "Price-reasonable", to us, it's first about breaking even. I will look into the companies you linked, looks interesting! Though to give you food for though, I will tell you about a french drone manufacturing company, they manufacture in house, they turn over probably around 10 million € a year. I know first hand they stencil print around 10k boards a year using a "machine" that is 2x4's from the hardware store, and a credit card :)
  - joe_mamba 9mo ago
    >I will tell you about a french drone manufacturing company [...] Can you also tell us the name?
    - abielefeld 9mo ago
      Sadly I cannot disclose it
      - Xunxi 9mo ago
        Parrot
- smeeagain2 9mo ago
  [dead]
- wasmperson 9mo ago
  > It's not possible to make a competitively priced product that way. What are you going to do, sell artisanal circuit boards on Etsy? 10 years ago in the US I met someone who owned a company of about 5 people that he largely built off of the acquisition of a single broken pick-and-place machine which he repaired himself. They applied the solder paste manually and finished the boards in what looked like a toaster-oven. Each production run consisted of around 100 units which were sold at $50 apiece. The company is still in business today, as far as I'm aware.
Joel_Mckay 9mo ago
Design for manufacturability means you leave tolerance within Factory limits, and your own prototyping process limits. While an inexpensive PnP machine will do 50k to 80k components/hour. If you have someone doing _any_ task, than add $3 USD * number of operations per unit. Tech is a low-margin business with a lot of regulations, and should be contracted to a proper facility if making over a few thousand units a month. Tooling up for a production line is almost always a bad idea, as it usually adds additional barriers to a product launch as people get sidetracked. =3

Animats 9mo ago

It's not possible to make a competitively priced product that way. What are you going to do, sell artisanal circuit boards on Etsy? Here's a small US-based PCB board and assembly facility in the US, in Hesperia, California.[1] Looks like it might have 20 to 30 employees from the building picture. This is probably about as small as a viable business of this type gets. It doesn't have to be done in a huge plant like JLCPCB in Shenzhen. Here's a company in India, Invariance, which makes low-cost semi-automatic machines to do exactly the same operations 39c3 is doing.[2] They have three machines - a solder paste spreader, a pick and place machine, and a mini tunnel reflow oven. They make all three machines. These machines intended for small companies who want to assemble their own boards in house. The solder paste spreader is just automated enough to do a consistent job, with pressure and timing controlled. The pick and place machine uses their own feeder design which runs off strips of component tape. The tunnel oven is small, only about a meter long. That's close to a viable minimum production solution. [1] https://mermarinc.com/ https://mermarinc.com/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_VCJyeqa-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_VCJyeqa-A

crote 9mo ago
That depends on your definition of "competitive", doesn't it? Being 3x as expensive as China but 0.1x as expensive as current small-scale EU manufacturing can be extremely competitive. Plenty of people looking for <1000 unit runs would be willing to pay extra for a "made in EU" label.
- Joel_Mckay 9mo ago
  If the only service a CM brings to the table is cost reduction, than its a doomed business model. Rule #23: Don't compete to be at the bottom, as you just might actually win. Have a great day =3
  - nebula8804 9mo ago
    Technically the differentiation isn't cost reduction its in shored manufacturer. That can become an important requirement as firms become more wary of IP theft and other issues. Besides other than that what can you really differentiate in this field that isn't cost? Its a service that is standardized regardless of country. Maybe you can provide different "styles" of boards (ie. different specs) or improve the entire submit to production pipeline but thats about it.
    - crote 9mo ago
      The pipeline is a massive one - especially for PCBA. Being able to get an instant quote and order in 5 minutes is worth a lot. Nobody wants a 2-week-long back-and-forth with sales and engineering for a basic prototype run.
      - nebula8804 9mo ago
        I don't know how much real innovation can happen there that the Chinese haven't done. In fact the Chinese haven't really innovated, that have optimized existing processes. Think about it: If you break it down: a "2-week-long back-and-forth with sales and engineering for a basic prototype run" is the same stuff happening in the background as the "get an instant quote and order in 5 minutes"...just much faster. Thats not the innovation I was talking about: Let me give an example. When the Xbox was being developed, there was a push within Microsoft to create a standard CD‑based game console that was a more refined version of the existing competitors. The Xbox team pushed back and said: No, you don't enter a market and just copy the incumbents. You need to do something different and differentiated. So they innovated by adding a hard drive and standard networking to every console. The addition of these components as standard in each console opened up a new paradigm of gaming with Xbox Live and was a different vision compared to what the others were offering at the time. They eventually ended up moving the market in a fundamental way. Now, going back to manufacturing, how do we translate that to PCB manufacturing? Again, I don’t know how you could possibly truly innovate the pipeline process more than it has already been done. Even just adding an AI‑handled pipeline process, it's just further optimizing what has already been done. There may or may not be an opportunity to truly move the market but if there is, then thats something the West can do to really compete.
snovv_crash 9mo ago
39c3 is the conference it is being presented at, not the presenter. 39th Chaos Communication Congress, the annual conference of the Chaos Computer Club. This is a hacker messing around who is presenting to inspire others and get feedback. Many things presented at Xc3 are wildly impractical, potentially illegal, or not even technical at all and more on the side of activism and policy. Most are interesting and fun, which is the main goal.
abielefeld 9mo ago
Hey, I'm one of the two speakers :) The commenter above you phrased it well: "Price-reasonable", to us, it's first about breaking even. I will look into the companies you linked, looks interesting! Though to give you food for though, I will tell you about a french drone manufacturing company, they manufacture in house, they turn over probably around 10 million € a year. I know first hand they stencil print around 10k boards a year using a "machine" that is 2x4's from the hardware store, and a credit card :)
- joe_mamba 9mo ago
  >I will tell you about a french drone manufacturing company [...] Can you also tell us the name?
  - abielefeld 9mo ago
    Sadly I cannot disclose it
    - Xunxi 9mo ago
      Parrot
smeeagain2 9mo ago
[dead]
wasmperson 9mo ago
> It's not possible to make a competitively priced product that way. What are you going to do, sell artisanal circuit boards on Etsy? 10 years ago in the US I met someone who owned a company of about 5 people that he largely built off of the acquisition of a single broken pick-and-place machine which he repaired himself. They applied the solder paste manually and finished the boards in what looked like a toaster-oven. Each production run consisted of around 100 units which were sold at $50 apiece. The company is still in business today, as far as I'm aware.

Joel_Mckay 9mo ago

Design for manufacturability means you leave tolerance within Factory limits, and your own prototyping process limits. While an inexpensive PnP machine will do 50k to 80k components/hour. If you have someone doing _any_ task, than add $3 USD * number of operations per unit. Tech is a low-margin business with a lot of regulations, and should be contracted to a proper facility if making over a few thousand units a month. Tooling up for a production line is almost always a bad idea, as it usually adds additional barriers to a product launch as people get sidetracked. =3